AIs almost never fight each other

[PimpyMicPimp]

^ The AI does suck at Warfare, I'm hoping that when they say they are improving them in BTS they will fix crap like that.

I want more hot AI-on-AI action! Ooh, it got steamy.

 

[Arkatakor]

^ The AI does suck at Warfare, I'm hoping that when they say they are improving them in BTS they will fix crap like that.

I want more hot AI-on-AI action! Ooh, it got steamy.

Yes, warfare is the other issue that the AI's are totally pathetic at. Its so rare to see the obliteration of a Civ in inter AI wars like you would in Civ3 and all its predecessors. In Civ4, they just cross each others borders, do a bit of pillaging then declare a truce.

I get the feeling that the Firaxis team was rushed to meet the deadline for this game (notice how incomplete the modern techs are compared to the ancient ones) - the modern era feels rushed - hell you can discover rocketry without flight! Notice how unoptimized the game was in terms of performance in its original release. This all adds to the argument that the game was rushed to meet the Christmass 2005 deadline.

I get the impression that Fireaxis was so hyped up about their new religion concept that they overlooked the issue in which same religions give TOO MUCH diplomatic benefits in terms of no wars AT ALL between neighboring civs in 70%-80% of games (default game options). This again was fault of lack of time to make and test adjustments towards the deadline.

However, this does not justify the fact that nothing has been done about it until this point - Firaxis has now had ample time to address the issue with a patch and have not done so. Once again I hate to use the word "boring" to describe this game but thats how I and many other people feel when action lacks much more often then not.

 

[Titler]

Just recently, I've been trying some 18 Civ Pangea maps on Prince, because I wanted to experience a game where diplomacy and cunning leads to victory, rather than just out-teching or out-producing my opponents. Wise alliances! Sudden stabs in the back! Religious Wars! All that kind of thing.

I think you can guess what actually happened. I ended up quitting the first five games out of disgust, due to a combination of the anti-player modifiers and warlike nations deliberately targetting you... In one game, Shaka even sent his entire army from one end of the Pangea to the opposite end where I was, as soon as his scout saw me, declaring war then refusing peace until around 40 turns later his army turned up... whilst in the meantime I'd since been attacked by two other Warmongers as well, my happiness was in the toilet, and I'd hardly any troops left.

But on the 6th game, a custom with only Diplomatic and Conquest victories enabled, it finally happened; by sheer good luck, the aggressive AI's were near each other, took different religions, and I after I'd destroyed Hannibal next door to me, I had Ghandi and Victoria as co-religionist neighbours; And so, inter-AI wars a plenty! At first, I had remarkable fun... Sending armies to fight on various fronts for my friends, tactically trading technology with each and a few of the non-associated Civs to keep in the game....

But *sighs* even then the game's terrible AI sought to rob me of any pleasure... Very rapidly the sides formed into 4 blocks, all lead by a Warmonger AI; needless to say they got the diplomacy bonus for being Warmonger's between them, where as I continued to get the negative bonus for being the player... leading to my inability to keep up technically as I'd constantly be declared war upon, thus making all my cities unhappy. Although I used the terrain of my allies to avoid losing my army and thus remained military strong, I'd fallen behind in tech. Even when I'd tech to something my allies didn't have, even when at Friendly with +15 odd modifiers, having fought alongside them for over 1000 years, I'd get hit with the "You are getting too advanced" penalty, despite being behind the average in tech. You'd think they'd want to strengthen their ally to aid their fight worldwide... but no, oh no.

Eventually Victoria loses her empire to Shaka, because I couldn't help both her and Ghandi enough. But together, Ghandi and I still have enough units and tech to be joint first in Power. A defensive pact seals our safety for a while, but at the same time, also ensures I can't continue to defend the one city of Victoria's that is left behind my lines. Nor can I accept her vassalage as the Warmongers won't ever declare peace with her because she's friendly with me... Taking it meant war with everyone else. So I continue building up my military to maintain an advantage and wait... wait... wait... But because of the Warmonger bonus, they other AI's are now just sitting there, to the point that all 3 end up constantly nuking Victoria for over 50 years until she vassals to them. By 2050 only two Civs are out of the game, and one of them was due to my conquering Hannibal right at the start, the rest are in 3 opposing blocks that just won't fight each other, because their leaders all like each other.

But finally, finally the two weakest blocks start a fight. "Ahah!" At last I can get involved and fight tactically against one of the two combatants; it means losing Ghandi's defensive pact for now, but combined I can help take down one block and gain more strength and land for myself. Except... damn it, the Player Penalty has built up such that all three blocks (thus everyone in the entire world except for Ghandi) instantly declare war upon me, including the AIs on the other side of the fight I've just joined. "Yes, Genghis Kahn may have just invaded our cities, but that other guy isn't an AI, so even though he is aiding our fight, we'll declare war on him too."

So I quit in disgust again, because it was obvious I could never win that game no matter how smart I tried to play it.

Honestly, whilst I understand that it won't be much fun to win games by default, because the AI exhausts itself fighting each other... but it's even less fun to constantly lose games because the AI is programmed to target you in particular. Where's the sense of a dynamically evolving world, a great cause to join in and fight for, or anything else, when all you can do is just ramp the difficulty down and then spam more units at a world that will always hate you than they can handle again? Where are the brave and decisive thrusts when you have to watch every single front, water space, and resource spot because they find those far more tempting to interfere with than the actual wars they are fighting?

No, the expansion had better fix this, because otherwise no matter what it adds in, the basic game simply won't be worth purchasing, sorry. Give me a world to play in, not just a set of calculations for how much I need to bludgeon my enemies because you can't rely upon them playing in any other way but trying to bludgeon you personally.

 

[Naismith]

At the very least, it would have been nice to allow a decent game setup option to control how warlike the AI's would be. The Aggressive AI option by itself is not enough.

I did some investigation of the various XML properties that can be modified to control AI aggression. I read every thread discussion I could find on the subject, and attempted my own modifications of the XML. I ended up changing around 20-25 property values. It had to be done separately for each leader - most of it was in the leader head XML file.

I was able to make the AI's much more aggressive, much more likely to war with close neighbors, and almost completely eliminated positive diplo modifiers. It resulted in a good number of wars, but they were still pathetic wars where very few cities exchanged hands. Basically, the AI's inability to concentrate forces was to blame - in my test games, I posted scouts to watch all the battles.

I tried the same XML mods in tandem with the Better AI mod, thinking that Better AI would be much better at warfare. This worked better, but in the one test game I ran, I was still disappointed in how many cities actually changed hands. I believe I played the game up to about 1300 AD, and 2 cities changed hands in all the wars (other than mine) that were fought. Again, I posted scouts to watch the battles. Basically, the AI doesn't seem to concentrate their forces adequately. They attack before building up a big enough stack, and the attack gets stalled. Given the limited amount of testing I've done with Better AI, I'm not in a good position to criticize, I'm just telling you what I saw.

I'm still mystified as to why some posters say they do see a decent amount of warfare (with many cities changing hands). I know some of them crowd the map quite a bit, but in my experiments, that hasn't helped very much. I can only conclude it must have something to do with other game settings or play style. Or maybe it just has to do with the subjective nature of the question "How much AI vs. AI war is enough?".

 

[Korut Zelva]

I'm happy others are disgruntled as I am about the pacivity of the AI.

I'm not very interested by the 'west indies company' gimmick but I'd be willing to buy the next expansion if the aggrevity issue is FIXED ONCE AND FOR ALL. Right now I've shelved the game after only one month of play. Not a good performance considering I've played the first 2 civ and alpha century for YEARS. Not a good value. Maybe if the expansion is really good maybe I'll forgive them for making buy the same game for a third time... grrrr

 

[Arkatakor]

I'm happy others are disgruntled as I am about the pacivity of the AI.

Right now I've shelved the game after only one month of play. Not a good performance considering I've played the first 2 civ and alpha century for YEARS.

Yes, I also played those extensively but NOT Civ4. And you shelved it for 2 reasons:

1) Boredom from lack of inter AI wars leading to lack of dynamic strategy required from the player

2) Disgust from the ridiculous level of anti human bias. Hell even the barbs will ignore enemy territory to pillage YOURS - plain cheating

I have also shelved this game and took it a step further by uninstalling it. You are right in saying that if the expansion does NOT address this core fundamental issue, the game will suck no matter what. I thought warlords would have addressed this issue. Only it did not.

When BTS comes out i'll be sure to make the right enquiries in this forum BEFORE i buy it. If they AI's are still passive and there is still high amounts of anti human bias i wont be making the mistake of buying it.

From what has been discussed in this thread it all looks like its down to the following issues:

1) AI's are too passive towards each other (esp same religion AI's - diplo bonus is TOO great)

2) AI's that DO fight each other suck at it completely as there is a severe lack of cities changing hands.

3) AI's not being able to recognize who is in the lead and act accordingly (not programmed to WIN the game). They should at least harbor dislike and mistrust for those who are way ahead of them REGARDLESS OF RELIGION.

4) AI's building spaceships even though they are clearly losing the race.

5) AI's unable to recognize the benefit of expansion by attacking AND conquering a neighboring Civ that has resources that would contribute to its Civ. Instead they will go way out of their way to attack an overseas Civ (typically human, because it did not give in to its ridiculous demands).

Anyone wanna expand on this list?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

Great post, Titler! I really enjoyed reading that

I had a bizzare experiance with AI warefare a few games ago. The AI actually did a decent job of it! Well, I shouldn't say actually, I should say could have.

Long story short, Issabella attacked me at Pleased while I was fighting against two of my neighbours. She landed a massive attack force near my capital and killed off any stray units and pillaged a huge chunk of my improvments, killing my economy. She could have easily taken my capital and a few other cities because most of my forces were busy elsewhere. Of course, like the stupid AI she is, she just pillaged for the 10 turns before she would talk to me and we made peace. She was still pretty happy with me so I barely had to give her anything to leave me alone.

If she had kept going, she could have really hurt me, if not wiped me out. Too bad

 

[Colossian]

^ The AI does suck at Warfare, I'm hoping that when they say they are improving them in BTS they will fix crap like that.

I want more hot AI-on-AI action! Ooh, it got steamy.

Use Always War option. It isnt working perfectly but it works.

 

[thadian]

Several times, in all difficulties now, i have loaded the ol' worldbuilder at different points. Doing this, i would go to diplomacy and set 2 comps at war with one another, and each turn, i would reload it and check up on their battles.

They would send an initial "assault unit" and a "backup unit" to hover around. They would fight small skirmishes, and almost never have REAL battles to eliminate-dominate one another. After watching 20 turns there were:
(Shaka vs Monteztuma)

6 battles
2 cities change hands (and one city change back).
about 8-14 units defeated-used in their war.

On turn 21, Shaka capitulated - and he wasnt really that far behind, only losing 2 cities of his 9 (of which 1 was won back).

Both sides would attempt to lure me on their side, but i wouldnt do it.

So then i loaded Earth 1,000 AD and used Montetzuma (to have no interaction), and watched SUPER-SALADIN build persia from india, to africa.

I set him to war with the rest of the world (except me, of course).

Every 5 turns, i loaded the worldbuilder to check the stats, and...

The alliance hadnt sent troops,
Arabia made no offensive

After 20 turns, they called peace, seemingly without a battle.



Then i edited myself a nice setup along south america, and vassled Inca.

When i set the euro-nations to war me, BOY DID THEY SEND EVERYTHING.


Why are the computers hesitant to fight each other? Unless one of them is grossly outmatched, it is rare for a civ to get eliminated.

 

[thadian]

Yes, I also played those extensively but NOT Civ4. And you shelved it for 2 reasons:

1) Boredom from lack of inter AI wars leading to lack of dynamic strategy required from the player

2) Disgust from the ridiculous level of anti human bias. Hell even the barbs will ignore enemy territory to pillage YOURS - plain cheating

I have also shelved this game and took it a step further by uninstalling it. You are right in saying that if the expansion does NOT address this core fundamental issue, the game will suck no matter what. I thought warlords would have addressed this issue. Only it did not.

When BTS comes out i'll be sure to make the right enquiries in this forum BEFORE i buy it. If they AI's are still passive and there is still high amounts of anti human bias i wont be making the mistake of buying it.

From what has been discussed in this thread it all looks like its down to the following issues:

1) AI's are too passive towards each other (esp same religion AI's - diplo bonus is TOO great)

2) AI's that DO fight each other suck at it completely as there is a severe lack of cities changing hands.

3) AI's not being able to recognize who is in the lead and act accordingly (not programmed to WIN the game). They should at least harbor dislike and mistrust for those who are way ahead of them REGARDLESS OF RELIGION.

4) AI's building spaceships even though they are clearly losing the race.

5) AI's unable to recognize the benefit of expansion by attacking AND conquering a neighboring Civ that has resources that would contribute to its Civ. Instead they will go way out of their way to attack an overseas Civ (typically human, because it did not give in to its ridiculous demands).

Anyone wanna expand on this list?

6. The weaker AI's almost never interact with you, and NEVER "enforce" their demands.

7. Computers forgiving each other - I lost a game on diplomatic victory to someone who UNPROVOKEDLY NUKED 4 other nations (12 nation game).
At the time of the loss, i was number ONE ahead by over 1,000 VP.

8. Vassal states abstaining instead of voting their master as the leader - and high-ranking nations abstaining (or voting NO) to things like free market that only help everyone, i think the comp would rather burden itself 50% than help you 5%.

9. AI building sensless things (like building wonders and granaries when i'm at war on their cities. Or the AI using their lowest prod city to build a wonder, and a high prod one to build low-end troops they dont use.

10. AI's capitulate too easy to one another, a super-power in the making might become vassal of someone only one city bigger.

If you really want vassalage to be a non-issue, set up a team battle, you alone in team 1, and the rest of them paired in 2-nation teams. VERY RARELY will someone become a vassal.

 

[thadian]

also reminds me f one time when the WHOLE world was at war with a much overpowered Shaka, i finally joined their alliance to maintain my points with Asoka.

RIGHT AFTER I HIT NEXT TURN, Shaka capitulates - and everyone has a -2 "you declared war on my friend" penalty with me, Then the second time i hit next turn, the whole world, INCLUDING ASOKA (despite +18 with him) declared war against me.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

also reminds me f one time when the WHOLE world was at war with a much overpowered Shaka, i finally joined their alliance to maintain my points with Asoka.

RIGHT AFTER I HIT NEXT TURN, Shaka capitulates - and everyone has a -2 "you declared war on my friend" penalty with me, Then the second time i hit next turn, the whole world, INCLUDING ASOKA (despite +18 with him) declared war against me.

Oh man that sucks. The stupid AI is one of the worsts parts of the game, IMO. If they can fix that and improve diplomacy (expeically the UN!) Civ 4 would become so much better, I'd be willing to call it one of the best games ever (that I've played anyways), putting it ahead of Starcraft:O

 

[Thedrin]

Thadian:
also reminds me f one time when the WHOLE world was at war with a much overpowered Shaka, i finally joined their alliance to maintain my points with Asoka.

RIGHT AFTER I HIT NEXT TURN, Shaka capitulates - and everyone has a -2 "you declared war on my friend" penalty with me, Then the second time i hit next turn, the whole world, INCLUDING ASOKA (despite +18 with him) declared war against me.

PimpyMcPimp:
Oh man that sucks. The stupid AI is one of the worsts parts of the game, IMO. If they can fix that and improve diplomacy (expeically the UN!) Civ 4 would become so much better, I'd be willing to call it one of the best games ever (that I've played anyways), putting it ahead of Starcraft:O

That's not necessarily stupidity on the part of the AI. The diplomatic modifiers aren't the only thing that determines the decision to go to war and the other civs may have had other good reason to attack Thadian.

 

[bob rulz]

I think this thread has hit the nail on the head of why I just can't really get into this game like I did in Civ 3. Too constantly I find that the AIs just don't war with each other enough. I've only played a few games (I don't think I've actually finished any yet, but I rarely even finished games in Civ 3), but this recent one is the one that has had the most AI vs AI wars...and they were all against one player. With how things are going, I'm afraid that that will be all the AI vs AI wars that have occurred. I have aggressive AI checked. Monty and Shaka just happened to end up right next to each other, and they teamed up with Alexander to batter Victoria, who actually lost 4 of her 6 cities. I don't know if she capitulated to anyone or not, I can't remember, but they didn't kill her off. I killed off Napoleon, but no one has yet declared war on me. Granted, I'm only on Warlord difficulty (however, I've found this one game to be very easy, next game I will move up to Noble), but I found myself trying to bribe people on the other side of the continent to war with each other to make things more interesting, and I have yet to get 2 of the larger powers to go to war with each other over any deal that I really felt was worth it. And I have yet to get above "cautious" with anyone.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I think the cause of default AI's warfare tactics being not so effective is the huge defensive power of cities in Civ4.

Those of us who played (or still play) Civ3 know that Civ3 AI's ability to concentrate forces and its warfare tactics in general were bad - even worse then in Civ4 - in Civ4 the AI at least can realize that it can be a good thing to protect its Cavalry with a Rifleman!

Why, them, Civ4 AI has much more difficult time taking each other's cities? Because in Civ4 Firaxis beefed up city defence, making it more easy to defend cities, then to attack them!

I am not complaining about that beefing up cities - it is a good thing per se IMO. But when the AI has difficulties with it...
------------------------------------------------
Althrough, in my recent game with Beter AI, I've seen Alexander conquering 2/3 of Incaland before making Atahualpa his vassal, the French, the Celts and the Vikings conquering 1/2 of India, (before Ghandi vassalized to Louis) and Washington eating up a large chunk of Atzecs' land before I negotiated peace between them. Still, Better AI is a work in progress (now halted a bit because the main developer is working on BTS) and in the late game theae assets start popping up... Althrough there is a new experimental version of BetterAI for more warlike behaviour, so...

 

[Smidlee]

Good point Lone Wolf. The saying "You can't have your cake and eat it too" seems to apply here. I've notice many strategy games (not just Civ4) tries to make their AI better. Back In civ2(3 as well) days most TBS AI's was very aggressive but awful at defense. For example Heroes 3.
Civ through civ3 while interesting, the AI was too aggressive for it's own good. In Civ4 they tried to make AI stronger by having a good defense yet if AI are better at defense (also pick it's wars more carefully) then it makes it harder not only for human player to take AI's cities but other AI as well. AI's are better at destroying and warring with each other if the AI's suck at defending. Heroes 3 ( I really like that game) was full of AI's taking other AI cities yet that's because they often left very few troops at home.
IN civ3 as well as in Galciv 2 many have stated it's too easy to keep AI's to war among themselves which allows a human player pick off one AI at a time. One way to address this ( games like PC Risk does this) is have the AI bias against the human player (it's only fair when you come to think about it as we have a brain) yet fans will cry out against this action.
So I can assure you one thing , everybody will not be happy with BTS AI no matter what they do as it's a lose/lose situation.

 

[Naismith]

I think the cause of default AI's warfare tactics being not so effective is the huge defensive power of cities in Civ4.

...

Why, them, Civ4 AI has much more difficult time taking each other's cities? Because in Civ4 Firaxis beefed up city defence, making it more easy to defend cities, then to attack them!

That was my theory, too. In an attempt to change that, I made some modifications to XML: I capped cultural defense at 20% (even with walls and castles). I tried to help the AI concentrate its forces better by making it much more likely to declare war on neighbors. I was very pleased with myself, and played some experimental games, choosing a mix of warmongers and others, crowding the map, all the tricks I could think of to encourage war and conquest among the AI's. I got lots of wars and very few cities changing hands.

My conclusion is that the AI needs a larger number of units than a human before it will have a chance of concentrating enough forces to actually take cities effectively. Think about it: Civ3 had more cities and more units, so the AI had a better chance of doing something effective. One of the main aims of Civ4 was to reduce the number of cities and units. It accomplished that at the cost of reducing the AI's ability to war effectively.

Well, it's a theory. My next experiment will be to reduce unit cost and see what happens. The law of unintended consequences tells me that the AI's will overbuild military and ruin themselves economically.

 

[azzaman333]

Sigh... this thread made me go back and play a game of Civ 3 to see what had been left behind, and I'm very disappointed... On a standard sized map with standard number of opponents on a mid-low level difficulty, the other continent had at least 3 wars declared that had nothing to do with me, plus 4 military alliances signed between AIs against other AIs. By 1000AD there were 2 AI which actually had a chance to defeat me even though I had taken control of over half my starting continent. Had I had the same success in a game of Civ 4, I undoubtedly would've been too powerful for any AI to stop me, or beat me in a space race.

 

[thadian]

Thedrin - It was diplo all the way, but there were minuses on me from refusing war, or refusing my only iron for another sheep or something... I think that Shaka declared war on me first, and lured the minus nations, who lured their friends and a nation either in Asokas culture group or friendlier to him than me bought his services.

When faced with demands it would be nice to be able to make a counter-offer in its stead, or at the very least to have polite and rude ways to accept-decline.

Wouldnt it be nice if they demanded chemistry and i could say "Here, take nationalism and go away" or if they would make a multi-choice demand?
like... "I need Nationalism, Chemistry or feudualism" or if you could subtly decline a war with a multi-choice reason.

I feel like i should be able to communicate with the AI on terms outside of yes and no - i should be able to have a neutral option like AI demands me to help in war... I should be able to say "Yes, lets smother them", "I suppose, i can help you THIS time" or "Grrr... Fine, but you need to help yourself from now on." and no should be like "I am not strong enough to help", "I do not wish involvement in this conflict" or "How about you not pick a war you cant win, ok?"

Multi-Choice might not be a perfect fix, but it would be better than a hardline yes or no. When i look at the + and - system, i almost wonder why the AI does not see or care about the + and - it gets from me (as it breaks trades, declares war etc) and if it gets negatives from AI friendly to me when im nuked.

 

[Daedal]

Regarding those war help encounters, it would be nice if you had an option of gifting them a unit/tech/money instead of being forced into war if you elect to help.